Advance Paris WTX-TUBES

Advance Paris WTX-TUBES

Bluetooth receiver with an audiophile approach.

Advance Paris has been known for years for its excellent sounding Bluetooth receivers. Advance also regularly uses vacuum tubes in its products, such as in CD players and amplifiers. Designing a Bluetooth receiver with vacuum tubes is therefore perhaps obvious.

Tubes in the analog output stage

It has become the WTX-TUBES. A design where the famous Raytheon 5703 vacuum tubes are used in a Class A setup in the output stage, just after the d/a converter and before the analog output. The tubes are mounted in insulating holders to suppress microphonic effects and to ensure a constant temperature. The analog output can be connected with an RCA/Cinch cable to an analog input (Line In or AUX) on an amplifier, receiver, etc.

High Quality Dac

Advance does not use the Qualcomm integrated DAC (digital/analog converter) in the standard Bluetooth chipset. Advance makes a branch and uses a self-selected and higher qualified Cirrus Logic/Wolfson WM8740 (24bit/192kHz) DAC. Despite the fact that Bluetooth 5.0 HD has a maximum resolution of 24 bit/48kHz, the WM8740 with its higher resolution is used because of its beautiful sound. The WTX-TUBES also has an optical and coaxial output to be able to use an external DAC.

HD-DETECT, a unique feature

The WTX-TUBES is set to Bluetooth Hi-Res 5.0 mode by default. Recognizable by the illuminated blue LED on the front panel. However, it is possible that the sound quality will decrease, especially when the signal transmission between the transmitting device and the WTX-TUBES is too weak or unstable due to, for example, a slightly too large distance. In such a case, the HD mode can be switched off by setting the switch on the back to 'Off'.

If the source device does not offer aptX HD, that is not a problem. The WTX-TUBES is backwards compatible with older Bluetooth protocols.